Soldati USA sparano su ribelli Albanesi al confine macedone

[Paola Lucchesi <paola.lucchesi@mail.inet.it>]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010307/aponline111334_000.htm

US Soldiers Wound 2 in Kosovo Fight

By Fisnik Abrashi
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, March 7, 2001; 11:13 a.m. EST

DEBELDE, Yugoslavia -- U.S. soldiers in Kosovo traded fire Wednesday
with gunmen near the Macedonian border, where American troops have been
working to contain an ethnic Albanian insurgency. The U.S. military said
two gunmen were wounded.
    The incident occurred inside Kosovo, just across the border from the
Macedonian village of Tanusevci, where Macedonian troops and ethnic
Albanian guerrillas clashed for two days this week. No American soldiers
were injured, the U.S. military said.
    "We don't want any more violence, but this will be up to those armed
men," said Maj. James Marshall, a spokesman for the U.S. peacekeepers.
    Just seven miles to the northeast, two Yugoslav soldiers were killed
and two others injured when their vehicle hit a land mine in the village
of Oreovica, on the edge of a buffer zone between Kosovo and the rest of
Serbia, Serb Information Minister Biserka Matic said.
    The U.S. peacekeepers - part of a NATO-led force in Kosovo - poured
into the border village of Debelde this week to help Macedonia prevent
the conflict with the guerrillas from spreading.
    They were searching for weapons in the nearby hamlet of Mijak early
Wednesday, when four men in black uniforms with red patches pointed
weapons at them. When the men began moving toward them, the U.S.
peacekeepers opened fire, the military said. The men shot back before
they fled, under cover of fog.
    U.S. forces first believed the men had retreated across the border
into Macedonia, but later were uncertain. One of the wounded gunmen was
evacuated by U.S. troops, and peacekeepers were searching Mijak for the
second, who remained at large.
    "We're not going to allow violence to spill over into Kosovo,"
Marshall said.
    NATO is to decide this week whether to allow Yugoslav forces to help
keep ethnic Albanian rebels out of Macedonia, the alliance's
secretary-general said Tuesday.
    Lord Robertson said NATO would consider letting Yugoslav troops
return to a narrow strip of land along the joint border of Yugoslavia,
Macedonia and the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, which remains under NATO
and U.N. control.
    Under the plan being considered, Yugoslav forces would not be
allowed to return to Kosovo. However, Robertson said NATO-led
peacekeepers were stepping up controls along the Kosovo-Macedonian
border "to restrict the use of Kosovo as a reinforcement area."
    The area is within a three-mile-wide buffer zone set up in 1999
around Kosovo to prevent Belgrade's troops from launching surprise
attacks against NATO-led peacekeepers, after a 78-day NATO bombing
campaign launched to stop then-President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown
on Kosovo Albanians.
    Ethnic Albanian militants - who want to unite parts of Serbia and
Macedonia where ethnic Albanians live- have used the corridor to smuggle
weapons and fighters into southern Yugoslavia.
    The guerrillas have stepped up activity in northern Macedonia -
raising fears of more widespread Balkan conflict. Macedonia has a
restive ethnic Albanian community which makes up about one-fourth of its
2 million people.
    Battles on the Macedonia side of the border - within shouting
distance of Debelde - killed three Macedonian soldiers this week.
    Macedonian security officials reported an exodus of local population
fleeing the possible widening of clashes.
    Macedonian police spokesman, Stevo Pendarovski, said Wednesday that
about 300 ethnic Albanians, mostly women and children, fled their homes
since Monday in villages along the border.

© Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
_______________________________________________________________________
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Wednesday March 7 7:28 AM ET

KFOR Injures Two Gunmen on Kosovo-Macedonia Border

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - The NATO (news - web sites)-led KFOR
peacekeeping force in Kosovo shot and injured two gunmen at the border
with Macedonia Wednesday, a spokesman said.
    It was the first armed engagement between KFOR and the gunmen since
the peacekeepers started reinforcing the border last week. KFOR did not
give the gunmen's ethnicity.
    ``This morning Multinational Brigade East soldiers injured two armed
males after brief exchange of gunfire near the village of Mijak in
Kosovo. No KFOR soldiers were injured,'' KFOR spokesman Richard Heffer
told reporters.
    ``The incident occurred around 9 a.m. when KFOR U.S. soldiers
identified a group of five armed men leaving a building on the outskirts
of the village,'' he said.
    The gunmen aimed their weapons at KFOR soldiers who responded with
small arms fire, he said.
    One of the injured was detained while the other, together with the
rest of the group, escaped to the Macedonian side, in the direction of
the village of Tanusevci where there have been skirmishes between ethnic
Albanian gunmen and Macedonian forces for the last 10 days.
    U.S. military spokesman Major Jim Marshall, contacted by telephone
later, said KFOR held two of the gunmen, one of them uninjured.
    He did not give details of his capture but said the area had turned
quiet and peacekeepers were trying to establish contact with the armed
group to avoid further violence.

Copyright © 2001 Yahoo! Inc., and Reuters Limited
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Wednesday March 7, 8:53 PM

KFOR shoots Albanian rebels as Skopje warns revolt could spread

SKOPJE, March 7 (AFP) - NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo on Wednesday clashed
for the first time with Albanian gunmen fighting Macedonian troops on
the border of the UN-run Yugoslav province, as Skopje warned the
conflict could spread rapidly.
    KFOR soldiers "injured two armed men after a brief exchange of fire"
around 9:00 am (0800 GMT) near the Albanian-populated village of Mijak,
in southern Kosovo, KFOR spokesman Richard Heffer told reporters.
    Another rebel was detained, while a fourth fled towards the
Macedonian village of Tanusevci, near Mijak, believed to be the
stronghold of ethnic Albanian guerrillas calling themselves the National
Liberation Army (UCK), he said.
    It was the first direct exchange of fire between KFOR and the
gunmen, thought to be linked to a much larger armed Albanian group
controlling a demilitarised buffer zone between Kosovo and southern
Serbia.
    The unrest has sparked fears that the conflict could rip apart
Macedonia's fragile ethnic population of two million -- at least a
quarter of whom are Albanian -- and plunge the region into conflict,
dragging in NATO troops in Kosovo.
    Wednesday's clash came just a day after KFOR troops, who have beefed
up their presence on the border after weeks of clashes between Albanian
rebels and Macedonian troops, arrested six suspected Albanian rebels.
    In Skopje, Defense Ministry spokesman Georgi Trandafilov said
Macedonia "has strong indications that fresh provocations against some
other village (in the area) can be expected soon."
    Trandafilov said there was no shooting overnight Tuesday, but
expressed concerns over "certain movements," presumably by the rebels,
within Kosovo itself, near the border.
    He said Macedonian forces heard shots from the Kosovo side of the
border.
    Police spokesman Stevo Pendarovski said about 100 women and children
had fled the village of Gosince near the border, fearing further
conflicts.
    He denied reports that the villagers had fled due to police
harassment, and called on people to remain in their homes.
    Macedonian officials remained tight-lipped over an announcement by
NATO that it would consider letting Yugoslav troops back into part of
the buffer zone between Kosovo and southern Serbia.
    Yugoslav forces would occupy a sliver of land between Macedonia's
northern frontier and the so-called Ground Safety Zone which runs
north-south between Kosovo and Serbia, NATO Secretary General George
Robertson's spokesman said at UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday.
    The buffer zone was previously off limits to all forces except
lightly armed Serbian police, giving the rebels almost free run in the
zone.
    In Belgrade, Yugoslav army spokesman Colonel Svetozar Radisic said
army units were ready to go back into the zone if an agreement was
reached.
    Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic said a Yugoslav force in
the area would be a "serious protection force which would prevent
incursions by terrorist Albanians into Macedonian territory."
    "I hope we will get confirmation (of the NATO decision) very soon,"
he added.
    On Sunday, Macedonia closed the border with Kosovo, demanding an
urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council as well as the
creation of a buffer zone between the two regions.
    In a bid to secure the area, Skopje mobilised army reservists and
police, as KFOR observers said they had spotted between 75 and 150
Albanian fighters in the area, armed with automatic weapons, rocket
launchers and machine guns.
    However, the Macedonian defence ministry insisted that as many as
300 have been active there and President Boris Trajkovski vowed to expel
extremists from Macedonian territory.
    Bulgaria, fearing another bloody conflict in the region, said
Wednesday it would begin shipping arms to neighbouring Macedonia this
week to help Skopje deal with the clashes.
    Bulgarian Prime Minister Ivan Kostov said he will travel to
Macedonia on Thursday for a two-day visit.

Copyright © 2001 AFP